The Musar movement (also Mussar movement) is a Jewishethical, educational and cultural movement that developed in the 19th century in Eastern Europe, particularly among OrthodoxLithuanian Jews. The Hebrew term Musar (מוּסַר), is from the book of Proverbs 1:2 meaning moral conduct, instruction or discipline. The term was used by the Musar movement to refer to efforts to further ethical and spiritual discipline. The Musar Movement made significant contributions to Musar literature and Jewish Ethics.

The Musar movement arose among the non-HasidicOrthodox Lithuanian Jews as a response to the social changes brought about by the Enlightenment, and the corresponding Haskalah movement among many European Jews. In this period of history anti-Semitism, the assimilation of many Jews into Christianity, and the impoverished living conditions of many Jews in the Pale of Settlement caused severe tension and disappointment. Many of the institutions of Lithuanian Jewry were beginning to break up. Religious Jews feared that their way of life was slipping away from them, observance of traditional Jewish law and custom was on the decline, and even those who remained loyal to the tradition were losing their emotional connection to its inner meaning and ethical core.[citation needed]

The movement's founding is attributed to RabbiYisrael Lipkin Salanter (1810–1883), although the roots of the movements drew on ideas previously expressed in classical Musar literature. Prior to the founding of the Musar movement, musar was a practice of the solitary seeker; thanks to Salanter, it became the basis for a popular social/spiritual movement.

Yisrael Lipkin Salanter, a promising young rabbi with exceptional knowledge of Jewish law living in Salantai, Lithuania, was initially inspired to dedicate his life to the cause of spreading Musar by his teacher Rabbi Yosef Zundel Salant (1786–1866). Zundel Salant was a student of rabbis Chaim Volozhin and Akiva Eiger, whose profoundly good-hearted and humble behavior and simple lifestyle attracted Yisrael Salanter's interest. Zundel Salant was said to urge Salanter to focus on Musar.

Widely recognized as a rabbi of exceptional talent, Yisrael Salanter became head of a yeshivah in Vilna, where he quickly became well known in the community for his scholarship. He soon resigned this post to open up his own yeshiva, at the which he emphasized moral teachings based on the ethics taught in traditional Jewish rabbinic works, especially Musar literature. Salanter referred to his approach as the Musar approach, using the Hebrew word for ethical discipline or correction.

He particularly concentrated on teaching Jewish business ethics, saying that just as one checks carefully to make sure his food is kosher, so too should one check to see if his money is earned in a kosher fashion.[1]

Rabbi Salanter set an example for the Lithuanian Jewish community during the choleraepidemic of 1848, ensuring that necessary relief work on Shabbat for Jews was done by Jews (despite the ordinary prohibition against doing work on Shabbat), and ordering Jews whose lives were in danger to eat rather than fast on the fast day of Yom Kippur.

In 1848, the Czarist government created the Vilna Rabbinical School and Teachers' Seminary. Salanter was identified as a candidate to teach at the school, but he refused the position and, fearing backlash, left Vilna. Salanter moved to Kovno, where he established a Musar-focused yeshiva at the Nevyozer Kloiz, with a student body of approximately 150 students.

In 1857 he moved to Germany. By this time his own students from Kovno had begun to set up their own yeshivot in Kelme, Telz, and elsewhere. Salanter later helped to found another institution, the Kovno Kollel.

In Germany, Salanter founded a periodical entitled Tevunah, dedicated in part to Musar. Many of Rabbi Salanter's articles from Tevunah were collected and published in Imrei Binah (1878). His Iggeret ha-Musar ("ethical letter") was first published in 1858 and then repeatedly thereafter. Many of his letters were published in Or Yisrael ("The Light of Israel") in 1890 (edited by Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer). Many of his discourses were published in Even Yisrael (1883).

Salanter also wrote "An Essay on the Topic of Reinforcing Those who Learn our Holy Torah," published in a collection of essays entitled Etz Peri. This essay is important for its exploration of the concept of the subconscious, well before the concept was popularized by Sigmund Freud. In Salanter's essay, the concept of conscious ("outer" [chitzoniut]) and subconscious ("inner" [penimiut]) processes and the role they play in the psychological, emotional and moral functioning of man is developed. Salanter explains that it is critical for a person to recognize what his subconscious motivations [negiot] are and to work on understanding them. He also teaches that the time for a person to work on mastering subconscious impulses was during times of emotional quiet, when a person is more in control of his thoughts and feelings. Salanter stresses that when a person is in the middle of an acute emotional response to an event, he is not necessarily in control of his thoughts and faculties and will not have access to the calming perspectives necessary to allow his conscious mind to intercede.

Scholar Hillel Goldberg and others have described Salanter as a "psychologist" as well as a moralist.

After Salanter's death, the Musar movement was led by his disciples, who taught, published his work, and were rabbis in leading cities. His eldest disciple, Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, directed yeshivas in Kelm and Grobin. Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer became the chief rabbi of St. Petersburg in 1861-2, and later led the Kovno kollel. Rabbi Blazer also published many of Salanter's writings. A third leading disciple of Salanter, Rabbi Naftali Amsterdam, became the chief rabbi of Helsinki.

In the following generation, leaders of the Musar movement included Zissel's student Nosson Tzvi Finkel of Slobodka, and Rabbi Yosef Yozel Horwitz of Novaradok. The schools founded by these two men became the largest and most influential schools of Musar. The Slobodka school founded by Finkel became especially influential, but the Novaradok school also gained a significant following.

Louis Jacobs has described the difference between these two schools as follows:

In Slabodka they taught: man is so great, how can he sin? In Navaradok they taught: man is so small, how dare he sin? [2]

In later years some opposition to the Musar movement developed in large segments of the Orthodox community. Many opposed the new educational system that Yisrael Salanter set up, and others charged that deviations from traditional methods would lead to assimilation no less surely than the path of classic German Reform Judaism.

In 1897, Eliezer Gordon of the Telshe yeshiva hired a new Musar supervisor, Rabbi Leib Chasman, who instituted a very strict Musar regime in the yeshiva. Many of the students opposed this approach, which caused dissent among the student body. At the same time, dissent against Musar also broke out at the Slobodka Yeshiva. A group of Lithuanian rabbis then published a declaration in the Hebrew newspaper Ha-Melitz in opposition to the study of Musar. According to the YIVO Encyclopedia,

they argued that while the study of moral texts was a venerable if distinctly limited element of Torah study, the sainted Salanter himself surely had had no intention of overturning traditional priorities and certainly not of creating a new sect that was itself contributing to that collapse of traditional Jewish life which it claimed to combat. This set in motion a wave of similar declarations, counterdeclarations, and polemics for and against Musar in the Hebrew press which reverberated throughout traditional circles. Eventually a sort of equilibrium emerged, with Musar remaining a feature of many yeshivas and its most heartfelt advocates and opponents finding for themselves distinct but congenial venues.[3]

Musar is a path of contemplative practices and exercises that have evolved over the past thousand years to help an individual soul to pinpoint and then to break through the barriers that surround and obstruct the flow of inner light in our lives. Musar is a treasury of techniques and understandings that offers immensely valuable guidance for the journey of our lives....

The goal of Musar practice is to release the light of holiness that lives within the soul. The roots of all of our thoughts and actions can be traced to the depths of the soul, beyond the reach of the light of consciousness, and so the methods Musar provides include meditations, guided contemplations, exercises and chants that are all intended to penetrate down to the darkness of the subconscious, to bring about change right at the root of our nature.[4]

Musar practices include text study, meditation, silence and retreat, diary practices, chanting, contemplations, visualization, and doing actions on behalf of others.[5] One of the central practices of the Musar movement was studying and meditating on classical Musar literature. Classics of Musar literature which were greatly valued by the Musar movement included:

Salanter recommended studying musar literature in a group. In one passage he spoke of meeting for study on the Sabbath:

The busy man does evil wherever he turns. His business doing badly, his mind and strength become confounded and subject to the fetters of care and confusion. Therefore appoint a time on the Holy Sabbath to gather together at a fixed hour... the notables of the city, whom many will follow, for the study of morals. Speak quietly and deliberately without joking or irony, estimate the good traits of man and his faults, how he should be castigated to turn away from the latter and strengthen the former. Do not decide matters at a single glance, divide the good work among you-- not taking up much time, not putting on too heavy a burden. Little by little, much will be gathered... In the quiet of reflection, in reasonable deliberation, each will strengthen his fellow and cure the foolishness of his heart and eliminate his lazy habits.[citation needed]

Many of the Jews involved in the Musar movement were killed in the Shoah. Hillel Goldberg has written that it was only before World War II that Musar was "still a living community."[7]

Some students of the Musar movement, however, settled in the land of Israel and established Musar yeshivas there.[citation needed]

While many former students of the Musar movement settled in the United States and were involved in a variety of Jewish institutions, they established few formal institutions dedicated to Musar during the 20th century.[8]

Many traditional yeshivas throughout the world, however, continued to allot some time during the week for Musar, and this continues today.[9] This time is often dedicated to the study of Musar literature.

At the start of the 21st century, a significant revival of interest in the Musar movement has occurred in North America in various sectors of the Jewish world.

Within the Orthodox community, the AishDas Society, founded by Rabbi Micha Berger, and the Salant Foundation, founded by Rabbi Zvi Miller, are organizations which organize Musar groups, classes and other teaching events. Elyakim Krumbain and Avi Fertig are Orthodox rabbis who have also published books which teach Musar from an Orthodox perspective.

To the surprise of some, much of the contemporary revival of Musar has taken place among non-Orthodox Jews.[10][11] The Musar Institute, founded by Alan Morinis, and the Mussar Leadership Program, founded by Rabbi Ira F. Stone, are among the institutions which have sought to spread the practice of Musar in a non-Orthodox framework. Morinis' book Everyday Holiness (2007) and Stone's book A Responsible Life (2007) have been among the popular books which have sparked contemporary interest in the Musar movement. Musar has been described as “an emerging and growing phenomenon” within Reform Judaism, and leaders of Conservative Judaism have debated whether Musar should stand at the center of its approach.[12] Geoffrey Claussen of Elon University has argued that the Musar movement's conception of Jewish practice is especially valuable for Conservative Judaism.[13]

Some Musar groups have no connection with synagogues, but a number of synagogues have started programs for the study of Musar.[14][15] For example, at Temple Chai in Chicago, Illinois, a program known as the "Sunday School for Grown-ups" has focused on the study of a different character trait each week.[16] There are also online communities dedicated to the exploration of Musar and character trait development. For example, madrega.com, which was founded in March 2009, is a community which encourages members to share teachings, ideas and learnings about their own personal Musar practice.

Some teachers have recommended the practice of Musar not only for Jews but also among non-Jews. As the website of the Mussar Institute explains:

The Orthodox Jewish community spawned Musar to help people overcome the inner obstacles that hinder them from living up to the laws and commandments—the mitzvot—that form the code of life. That community tends to see Musar as inseparable from its own beliefs and practices, but the human reality Musar addresses is actually universal, and the gifts it offers can be used by all people."[20]